The South African Civil Society Information Service
A nonprofit news agency promoting social justice. Seeking answers to the question:
How do we make democracy work for the poor?
A nonprofit news agency promoting social justice. Seeking answers to the question:
How do we make democracy work for the poor?
The relationship between democracy and governance and the realisation of socio-economic rights is an important issue for debate. SACSIS seeks to understand this relationship and identify issues that act as barriers to pro-poor democracy.
Dale T. McKinley -
It didn’t take long did it? Despite the lingering stupor, just a month after the end of the constructed mega-hype of the Soccer World Cup, South Africa is firmly back in the reality trenches. With intensified public attention on important social and economic issues/debates, a host of strikes and re-energised political faction fighting taking centre stage, it seems an apt time to critically redirect some of the fading winter sunlight onto the political, economic and social state of the...
Richard Pithouse -
As the glow of the World Cup dims and those of us who didn’t have to spend the tournament in Blikkiesdorp start to settle into the ordinary grind everyone from the captains of industry to the Communist Party is urging us to ‘build on the momentum’.
No one in their right mind could conclude that we don’t need momentum. In a country with systemic unemployment, an atrocious school system for most pupils, creeping and increasingly communal modes of...
Ebrahim-Khalil Hassen -
A reminder to the ANC that it needed to deepen democracy in society arrived at the ANC’s Polokwane conference, where one major gripe against President Mbeki was that he had failed to create “policy coherence” amongst the ANC and its alliance partners, let alone the broader society. Mbeki was criticised for insulating public policy through technocratic methods, and failing to build consensus in society beyond the so-called chattering classes. Whilst Mbeki’s vision for a...
Saliem Fakir -
World Cup soccer fever has swept across the country creating much euphoria and mesmerisation about South Africa’s ability to host the event and be part of the big league, as we have always strived to be.
The country seems to be caught in some sort of ecstatic purgatory.
Newspaper pages are filled with reports about what is happening on and off the soccer field. Gossip abounds, analysis of team performance is endless and national politics have taken a backseat for now -- to be replaced...
Liepollo Pheko -
Reflecting on June 16th in the midst of the flag waving, lung busting, slightly mind-numbing festival that is the world Cup has become almost incidental. In years to come one wonders whether June 16th will be remembered more as the day that South Africa’s self respect on the soccer pitch was severely dented or as the day which commemorates our young martyrs in the struggle for freedom.
In fact, the state of our attention span is indicative of how we have reconstructed our collective...
Dale T. McKinley -
Back in the bad old days of apartheid, things seemed to be a lot clearer when it came to God and politics. Leaving aside the confirmed agnostics, atheists and confused fence sitters, you were either in the Nat camp and embraced the God of 'Christian nationalism', racist and class privilege or you were in the liberation movement camp and embraced the God of social justice, racial equality and the oppressed poor.
A couple of decades on though, and the politics in the God equation has...
